we sound like starving accountants in the desert fighting over the last few mice and edible cacti

The are many issues belting about within this new media art debate, "the domination of the conceptual", " academic/critical acceptance", "loss of fun" and on.

However, the one central and underlying ghost floating beneath nearly all these posts is audience. Some dont care about audience, some are angry about being ignore by a particular audience, and others want to change the audience.

But, what we sound like are a bunch of starving accountants in the desert fighting over
the last few mice and edible cacti. If the few hundred (being generous) of us actively making work really tried to expand our audience (or not), finding users and viewers outside these small circles, we really wouldnt care about not getting two thousand dollar grants or bother ourselves with a single essay.

I mean seriously can someone tell me why one might get 100 hits from an online
gallery's posting of artwork, while a mention on a radio station blog or landscaping site brings in thousands, or tens of thousands. This is not to criticize art centered sites, but instead to again call for us to apply some of our amazing creativity and processing and technical prowess to building a larger, more diverse audience.

And no….I am not saying we should make work targetting a wider audience, but that with the hundreds of millions of possible viewers/users, surely there are a few percentage points interested in our crazy creations.

Is one art critic worth more than a hundred plumbers?

Jason


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